Hello and welcome to our Asian Optimism, I'm Tom Ravikarnak and I'm Paul Dickinson.

This week at the Close of COP28 we bring you a special conversation with Jennifer Morgan,

State Secretary and Special Envoy for International Climate Action from Germany.

Thanks for being here.

So it is the close of COP28, the UAE Consensus, as it is known was gabbled through in record

time this morning after a new text was released by the presidency overnight, so there's been

a lot of analysis and reaction to this throughout the day, which has been very interesting.

The new text, of course, built on a previous one where there was a big drama about whether

it was going to be phased out or phased down of fossil fuels, that ended up being resolved

in a compromise that we will get into that talks about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Some may think that softer, however, it is in the text.

We have now an international treaty that talks about transitioning away from fossil fuels.

That is a big deal, but there are nuances as well and we'll get into that.

So Paul, you and I are here now, sadly, we should say to listeners when we kick off that

Christiana is not with us today for this short conversation we're going to have with Jennifer

Morgan, so we're going to dive into it in a minute.

But before we welcome Jennifer, Paul, we spent quite a bit of time together at the beginning

of COP.

You had to leave to do various other things, but I know you've been paying close attention.

What were your observations?

Well, I kind of am fascinated by this idea that we come together, not with a world

government, but with the nations together, finding some kind of consensus as if there was

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